Mikkimingus
New Member
How tall is your cage and what is the set up if you don't mind taking a picture real quick
Calcium intake
- Thread starter bugagasashka
- Start date
Personally I think the only time that crickets will bite the cham is when the cham is sleeping,since the crickets usually hunt their food at night,and the cham won't move around during their sleep,thats why we should clean out the left over crickets at night especially if u own a baby cham which the skin of the babies is very tender smooth unlike the older cham,it could be easily damaged by the cricket trying to chew on it,but I never heard the crickets actually kill a chameleon ,cause if the cham is being bitten by the cricket,the cham will be awake by the pain ,it wont just sit there n let the crickets continue to bite its skin,the cham will start shaking its body or start moving just to avoid the crickets in everyway.
Carlton
Chameleon Enthusiast
Its not just the risk of a cricket biting a sleeping cham that's an issue with free ranged feeders...you should also consider that free ranged insects usually hide pretty quickly so they are not really "available" for the cham anyway. Crickets are nocturnal, so not very visible or active during the day. They groom off supplement dusts pretty quickly, and also lose their gut contents unless you leave gutload in the cage for them somewhere. They can also start feeding on feces, old grungy shed skin, dead plant material, you name it. Not great things for your cham to ingest.
JGuinan007
Avid Member
and the mutilation risks
bugagasashka
Member
This is my set up! My terrarium is 24x24x48!
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Virgil1972
Avid Member
I would add more cover. Chams like lots of places to hide and if they feel they don't have enough places to hide it will stress them. Which leads to shorter life spans and poor health.
bugagasashka
Member
Great advice! Thank you! I was planning on getting more fake plants and a live plant! And maybe a background for the back screen to keep the humidity in
Virgil1972
Avid Member
Live plants are best. They help keep the humidity up and they fill in the cage. I have a ficus and pothos in my cage.
Bush baby
Avid Member
Like i mentioned, i've been keeping chams for 20 years and have always free ranged my crickets. I leave food for them in the cage (see pic below), and that is the ONLY thing that i've seen them eat.
Collards, Blueberries and Bug Buffet.
What specie of cricket are these 'mutilation cases' attributed to because it's beginning to sound like an urban legend to me (sorry if this has actually happened to someone, but it sounds rather far fetched).
And for the record, yes crickets are nocturnal but it has been my long time observation that they are also quite active and feed during the day. They usually climb to the top of the cage and gather where it's warmest; a great spot for chams to readily feed on them. Can't say the same about roaches who seem to go into 'suspended animation mode' when the lights are on.
bugagasashka
Member
Can I see how you set it up?
Virgil1972
Avid Member
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bugagasashka
Member
That looks awesome!!
Virgil1972
Avid Member
It is a reptarium 260 gallon. It is 29x29x72. I like the size but the frame is small pvc tubing and cannot support much, thats why I made that wooden stand in the middle. The mesh is also nylon and not metal.
jajeanpierre
Chameleon Enthusiast
Here is a quote from Mader's veterinary text book, REPTILE MEDICINE AND SURGERY 2nd Edition, in the chapter Nutrition (Page 266) :
"Invertebrates may be offered as free-roaming or confined to a bowl or cup within the habitat. The author prefers the former technique because hunting provides behavioral enrichment and stimulates cognitive function. [Emphasis mine.] However, food intake is more difficult to quantify when prey are free roaming, and prey may escape the habitat. Reptiles have to be taught to bowl feed, and some never feed from containers. Underfeeding can be the result of owners bowl feeding to prevent escaped prey."
Nowhere do I see any reference to worry about crickets eating chameleon's eyes out or otherwise injuring them.
I keep many chameleons and usually have many cages of babies. I feed a lot of commercial crickets as a convenient staple feeder and I do not cup feed so my cages often have a lot of crickets in them. I have never in my life found any injuries to a chameleon that has crickets in their cage. No eyes eaten out. No wounds. None of the wounds that the animals came with from capture and import have ever gotten larger as one would expect if lose crickets in their cages were feasting on chameleons at night. I normally do no put any cricket food in the cages even though there might be a week's worth of crickets hidden in the plants, plants that are not particularly appetizing to crickets like a ficus. The one exception is if I put a particularly large amount of largish crickets in a baby cage, I will throw some shredded leafy veggies in "just in case" a hungry cricket might bite my little babies. As I do it, I realize I am only putting that cricket food in because of posts such as you have made, not from any evidence I have seen in my own keeping of a lot of chameleons.
You have read horror stories of chameleon being mutilated by crickets? Rubbish. You've read regurgitated old wives tales. Repeat it enough and and most people believe it to be fact.
The enrichment value the animal gets from hunting its own food is tremendous. The only reason I would ever cup feed is to be able to put fewer crickets in the cage and save money.
Virgil1972
Avid Member
I was looking at that book on amazon the other day and thinking about getting it. How do you like it and what kind of topics does it discus?
jajeanpierre
Chameleon Enthusiast
Please read my quote from Mader's veterinary text book above. In his book--a highly respected veterinary text book--the risks associated with feeding invertebrates was the chitin (the exoskeleton), toxicity of fire flies, the questionable safety of feeding Eastern tent caterpillars and invertebrates exposed to pesticides and herbicides. Nowhere is there reference to crickets causing injury to reptiles. If it was a concern, I think it would be listed under the section "Risks" re feeding invertebrates (P. 265 if you want to look it up).
jajeanpierre
Chameleon Enthusiast
It's a veterinary text book, so much is waaaaaayyyy over my head. I find it very helpful. I've learned a lot from it and also I've learned how little I understand. More importantly, I've learned how very little veterinarians really understand about reptiles. That was an eye opener to me. Things like kidney failure in mammals is really pretty straight forward to diagnose using blood tests. Not so with reptiles.
bobcochran
Chameleon Enthusiast
@jajeanpierre another benefit to keeping a little fresh cricket food in the cage is to keep the crickets gut loaded for the chams benefit.
Virgil1972
Avid Member
How is the part on parasites. I have a microscope coming and want to start doing some of my own fecal floats and I would like a good resource that I can trust on parasites.
